Skolelinux 3.0 is ready.
This is an community release with comprehensive support from regional
and national projects in Germany, Spain, France, Greece and Norway. The
Skolelinux project is now a part of Debian under the name Debian-Edu.
Several other projects have made additional functionality to Skolelinux
tailored for national needs. Skolelinux now supports more than 50
countries.

Whats new in Skolelinux 3.0:

* based on Debian 4.0 "etch" and therefore compatible to LSB 3.1, using
kernel 2.6.18 and KDE 3.5.5

* Full support for networked Thin clients, LowFat (diskless) clients,
Workstations and Laptops. With the LowFat clients users got full PC
functionality with extremely low maintenance cost. The use of LowFat
clients gives full support for sound, video, USB memory stick's and DVDs
without the need for a local installation.

* Skolelinux now got more than 80 applications selected for pedagogic
uses, supporting more than 50 languages. Many new applications are
introduced in addition to popular classic as GCompris, KDE-Edu,
Iceweasel (unbranded version of Firefox) and OpenOffice.org.

* Installation is a breeze: Both the installation and source code for
all software are now distributed on a single DVD now supporting three
different processor platforms as i386, PowerPC and AMD64. This makes it
more easy to choose hardware, and to study the recipes behind the
software. Those interested can excercize their freedom to learn,
participate and share knowledge more easily. Installation CDs are also
available, but requires a working Internet connection for installation.

About Skolelinux
Skolelinux is a complete tailored software solution for the needs of
any educational institution or school. It is a ready computer system
were the school does not need to piece together the components.

Skolelinux is the result of the work of the Debian Edu project and
Debian Edu is an official Debian subproject. It is installed in a great
number of schools in Norway, Germany, France and other countries.
Municipalities and Commercial Service Providers run Skolelinux across
multiple schools, operated and maintained centrally. Service providers
report that the "lowfat clients" require half the maintenance cost of
other desktop alternatives.

The next milestone of Skolelinux development will be to merge the
Debian-based LinEx distro into Debian Edu. Currently LinEx is used
by more than 250,000 students and public employees in the region of
Extremadura in Spain.

In depth
"Lowfat clients" is also known as Diskless workstations. They run
applications locally on the client. All software comes from the server
instead of locally from the client hard drive. Recommended minimum
requirement for client machines is > 256 MB RAM and 800 MHz CPU.
Skolelinux now got improved tools for system survailance and
maintenence.

Please note that the documentation for the 3.0 Terra release is only
available in English at the moment and contains some rough edges. We
have considered releasing before the end of the summer holidays more
important and we will fix those rough edges in the coming weeks, when we
also expect more translations to show up. Those fixes will be included
in the upcoming 3.0 r1 release.